STEVE BARNES/TIMES UNION
The culinary philosophy at Fish & Game is treat high-quality local ingredients with respect and simplicity, often cooked on wood fires.

STEVE BARNES/TIMES UNION
The culinary philosophy at Fish & Game is treat high-quality local ingredients with respect and simplicity, often cooked on wood fires.

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STEVE BARNES/TIMES UNION
Grilled ramps, left, with yogurt and mustards seeds and cornmeal dumplings with cheese and pickled marigold buds, which taste similar to capers.

STEVE BARNES/TIMES UNION
Grilled ramps, left, with yogurt and mustards seeds and cornmeal dumplings with cheese and pickled marigold buds, which taste similar to capers.

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STEVE BARNES/TIMES UNION
Pelaccio in his new kitchen.

STEVE BARNES/TIMES UNION
Pelaccio in his new kitchen.

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Straight from the field to the plate

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One day last week, the chef and restaurateur Zakary Pelaccio stopped his wife and co-chef, Jori Jayne Emde, as she was leaving Fish & Game, their new restaurant in Hudson. She was headed to their farm in Old Chatham.

"You'll grab some cattails and bring them back so we can taste them?" he said. She confirmed that she would.

The stalks of cattails — yes, those reeds with fuzzy brown pods at the top that grow in marshy areas and other wetlands — are not only edible, they're delicious, says Pelaccio. With ringed layers similar to a leek, the stalks have a fresh, crisp bite, and Pelaccio plans to use them in a dish that incorporates last summer's local corn that was preserved in salt, plus local cream and nasturtium oil made from flowers on the farm. It might appear in a meal at Fish & Game with another course of local pork flash-grilled over a wood fire with grilled wild ramps and tangerine and blood-orange mostardas that Emde made. A later dish might simply be a soft-cooked egg from the restaurant's chicken flock, served over bread baked in its wood-fired oven, local scallions and drizzled with one of the fish sauces Emde made from regional species: shad, herring and brook trout.

Even before it opens next week, Fish & Game is already an utterly distinctive and exciting restaurant. There will be one menu nightly of five to seven courses, its composition driven by whatever's available from the network of regional farms and producers Pelaccio has developed. Because the restaurant is buying and butchering whole animals and using as many different cuts as possible, what's available is likely to change even during the course of an evening. One lamb has only two racks of eight ribs; when the ribs are gone, the menu's lamb course might switch to loin or shoulder for later customers.

"People will have whatever we're cooking that night, like we would at home. We think they'll welcome it," says Pelaccio, a Westchester native who made his name with the Manhattan restaurants Fatty Crab and Fatty 'Cue, which feature the flavors of Southeast Asia. To further the at-home feel, the restaurant has an open kitchen and counters made of soapstone and butcher block, not stainless steel. (Says Pelaccio, "Who has stainless-steel counters in their home?") A fireplace in the dining room often will have meat roasting on a spit, and shelves are lined with jars of condiments that Emde has preserved, pickled and fermented.

More Information

Fish & Game

Where: 13 S. Third St., Hudson

Opens: Wednesday

Hours: 5:30 to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday

Fare: One changing daily menu of five to seven courses, priced at about $50 to $70 per person, depending on ingredients. A sample menu will be listed on the website, and past menus will be archived to give an idea of what the restaurant serves.

Info/reservations: (518) 822-1500; the website is not yet online.

She and Pelaccio have been spending time in Columbia County since 2005, when they began converting a barn on his parents' Old Chatham farm property into a place to live. Although Pelaccio retains a financial and creative interest in the Fatty Crew restaurant group, the couple moved upstate full time to open their dream of a local-seasonal restaurant featuring pristine ingredients cooked and presented simply. Their financial backer is Patrick Milling Smith, a film, TV and stage producer with a country home in Columbia County, whose credits include the Broadway musical "Once," which was nominated for 11 Tony Awards in 2012, winning eight.

The 36-seat Fish & Game is located in a historic brick building a block off the main drag of Warren Street, making it part of a vibrant Hudson restaurant scene alongside The Crimson Sparrow, Swoon Kitchenbar and Mexican Radio, all run by refugees from Manhattan restaurants.

"We realized that you don't have to be in New York (City) to do this kind of thing," says Pelaccio. "There's really amazing interest in eating local."

He understands there will be a necessary period of customer education for diners to be convinced to put themselves in a restaurant's hands, gambling that whatever is on the menu on a given night will be tasty and interesting.

"If someone wants a big menu that they can order just one thing or six from, there are other places that do that," says Pelaccio. "It's just not going to be how we work." A meal will likely include vegetable, meat, fish, cured /preserved stuff, salad or other greens and dessert. Expect components of most menus to come from their 2,500-square-foot home garden and elsewhere on the Old Chatham property, on which, with the help of specialists in wild plants, they've identified dozens of edibles, including ground ivy, garlic mustard, mint, wintergreen, pepperwort, wild horseradish and more.

"We had maybe six to 10 items that we planned to use outside of what we grow and cultivate," says Pelaccio. "That number has now quadrupled or quintupled."

He says, "I'm as happy as a pig in — well, I wish there was a more appetizing way to put it, but that's how excited I am."